TORQUE is an open source resource manager providing control over batch jobs and distributed compute nodes. Basically, one can setup a home or small office Linux cluster and queue jobs with this software. A cluster consists of one head node and many compute nodes. The head node runs the torque-server daemon and the compute nodes run the torque-client daemon. The head node also runs a scheduler daemon.

Must haves

/etc/hosts

Make sure that /etc/hosts on all of the boxes you plan to use in your cluster contains the hostnames of every PC in the cluster. Example, cluster consists of 3 PCs, mars, phobos, and deimos.

192.168.0.20 mars
192.168.0.21 phobos
192.168.0.22 deimos

Firewall configuration (if installed)

Be sure to open TCP for all machines using TORQUE.

The pbs_server (server) and pbs_mom (client) by default use TCP and UDP ports 15001-15004.
pbs_mom (client) also uses UDP ports 1023 and below if privileged ports are configured (the default).

NFS

Technically, one does not need to use NFS but doing so simplifies the whole process. An NFS or NFSv3 share either on the server or another machine is highly recommended to simplify the process of sharing common build disk space.

Setup

Server (head node) configuration

Follow these steps on the head node/scheduler.

Edit /var/spool/torque/server_name to name the head node. It is recommended to match the hostname in /etc/hostname for simplicity's sake.